the drive home

1. I suckled at my throttle with swollen illiterate lips for that last bit of life left at the bottom of my belly. (This is the drive home.) My hands and feet, lifeless in their places. Still, upon wheel and upon pedal. The street crumbles and moves like a giant painted tread. I blinked by now, or not blinked at all. Headlights, bright, cut through the haze. Parking I couldn’t remember if I’m coming or going. I approach the front door as if it were a holy place.

2. I approached the front door as if were a holy place. I stepped quietly, this is his front door. White shirt, white lips. We weaved the white threads of white sheets. We swayed like anemone and when I left cosmic stardust covered both of us. It fell like rain onto my windshield and like wild fire it followed me home. That night driving away my vehicle became a spaceship, rocketing through time until I was drinking the sound of screaming to silent exhaust. I flew into my bed and slept. I thought of his face. I carried home into my bed and thought of the day.

4. I carried home into my bed and thought of the day. Home is heavy, I slept heavy. I awoke and new life seared through me with wild blue sky. Light came like fire. The sunrays bounced off my side mirrors and were hot momentary passengers along for the ride. Normal idiosyncrasies passed and I danced vividly the night before. When the sun fell and evening came again I let my hand out the window like a wing and it waved through pockets of hot and cold. The wind said mantras, the engine made conversation and the hums of minds far away harmonized beside the road.
5. In an ocean of noise I came home to quiet. I left in seas of change. I first heard my voice and it quivered like tree branches. The clouds spoke back but there was no way to tell. Drugs in my body made me whisper, made me yell. Coffee in my body kicked me in the gut and spurred me onward. I was a cowboy riding into the sunrise. My buckskin horse had four rubber wheels and a theologian sitting in the backseat. Often times at red lights she tells me God is the hot sharp pain inside us. Always when I look back to tell her she’s wrong the light has by then turned green and the day has gone by. I must turn around to return home again. On days that disappear, my feet become the tan carpet under my brake and my eyes become the console lights. They constantly fade with them, into the darkness of each passing night. I open the next day, unable to recall how I came into my bed. My soul was a transistor.